German technology firm buys HighJump Software

International technology group Korber of Germany has acquired HighJump Software, which was acquired in 2014 by Colorado-based rival Accellos Software. Terms were not disclosed. HighJump will be part of Korber’s business-area logistics systems group that includes recently acquired American firm, DMLogic, said Hubert Klob, CEO of the group. “With our new HighJump colleagues on board, we now have a very solid basis, both in Europe and the USA, to continue our dynamic growth,” Klob said in a prepared statement. CEO Chad Collins of Bloomington-based HighJump said the firm, which has about 100 Minneapolis employees and 450 in North America, said the company has grown from about $150 million in revenue in 2014 to an expected $200 million this year. “Longer term, this [ownership by Korber] will give us access to more products, to the European market to the European market and more capital for acquisitions," Collins said. "We have a new holding-company owner, but we stay 'HighJump’ and nothing changes in day-to-ay interactions with customers.”

HighJump, which has had several owners over the years, was founded in 1983 by local entrepreneurs as a developer of bar code data collection systems. It was sold to 3M Co. in 2004 for about $90 million. In 2008, 3M sold HighJump for, reportedly, much less to Battery Ventures, a Boston-based venture capital firm. Accellos Software acquired HighJump in 2014 after it was fuel with expansion capital after Accel-KKR, a Silicon Valley private equity firm, bought a majority stake in 2012.